Uganda has 5 million registered evangelicals in over 2,000 churches, but that doesn’t account for the explosion of chaotic, random, freelance religious activity happening all over the country – including this man, who was preaching to passing traffic from the book of Psalms. He said he’s been in the same spot for two years, across from a golf course in downtown Kampala.
Meet Bobi Wine, “President of the Ghetto,” a rapper who is one of Uganda’s biggest stars. He’s also – as I learned in a visit to the Presidents White House today – just about this most articulate, educated force for positive HIV/AIDS messaging in Uganda today.
Son of a polygamous father, and one of 43 children, Wine is a self described bad-boy whose earliest hit cautioned his fans “not to be fools” when it comes to AIDS and always use a condom. Sitting on his front patio (he’s just getting over a bought with malaria) he warned about the double threat of poverty and HIV, and railed against an evangelical Christian culture which – right up to the first lady (the wife of Uganda’s President that is) – has failed in its responsibility to educate young people about safe sex. Wine is a realist who said in the community he comes from, a 19-year-old virgin is a rarity, and the only reliable protection from disease is a condom.
Elections are approaching next year, and Wine has just released a new single, whose message he says is, “Don’t let voting tear us apart” – a thinly veiled reference to the violence often associated with elections here. Wine said his model for Uganda is the image of “Obama and McCain, sitting at the same table, even after the election is over.”
Watch one of Bobi’s most popular songs, Carolina, which seems to deal with a young girl and her health issues.
A prominent member of Cambodia’s murderous Khmer Rouge regime has apologized for his role in his country’s brutal civil war. Kaing Guek Eav is being tried by a hybrid Cambodian/international court. The Financial Times reports:
“I am responsible for the crimes committed at S-21, especially the torture and execution of the people there,” Mr Eav, who is better known by his nom de guerre Duch, told a packed court on Tuesday.
The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia has been set up to try the leaders or those deemed most responsible for the crimes of the regime of Pol Pot. A question that has come up in the trials is can the perpetrators of the worst Khmer Rouge atrocities also claim to be victims of the regime?
Alex Hinton, author of Why Did They Kill? Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide, quoted in The Phnom Penh Post:
“But in every trial dealing with war crimes.. the biggest ethical question is: how do you distinguish between good and evil in an ideology so extreme that it was kill or be killed?”
A new book recently reviewed by The New York Times, Madame Prosecutor, Confrontations With Humanity’s Worst Criminals and the Culture of Impunity: A Memoir by Carla Del Ponte with Chuck Sudetic, details this former prosecutor’s challenges as she brought perpetrators to justice in the Rwanda and Yugoslavia tribunals.
Next week, AAM tackles the challenges surrounding the International Criminal Court (ICC) by visiting Uganda where rebel leader Joseph Kony is wanted for war crimes against the Ugandan people.
Ugandan women listen to the the ICC outreach team to hear about the court. Photo by Matt Ozug.